Le Chat Qui Rit
by Experimental
Summary: The fate of a nation rests in the seven-toed paw of one nameless ginger tom.
1. The Principle Of Uncertainty

**Notes:**_ What follows are the adventures and observations of the ginger polydactyl cat who made his appearance in episode 1.08, "Fated." Sadly, his time on screen was all too brief (just a few seconds), but I like to think he had a lasting role offscreen nonetheless._

_I owe this story to two great inspirations: the classic _I Am A Cat_ by Natsume Soseki, whose example I shall try to follow; and the Le Chat Qui Rit self-service restaurant in Venice, whose tiramisu has yet to be surpassed in my experience. It is in the latter's honor that I have titled this fic, which if I'm not mistaken can be translated to "The Cat Who Laughed"._

* * *

Le Chat Qui Rit

I.

"Let me try to frame it another way," said Michel, and he moved toward the chest on the far side of the room and gave it a pat.

"I'll bite," said the Queen. "What's in the chest?"

"Ah," said Michel. "That's just the thing. Until we open it up, we can't be sure what we'll find inside. When I closed this chest, it had in it: one live cat; and one glass vial filled with a noxious gas. Now, until I open the lid, one of two possibilities may have taken place: Either, the cat has not broken the vial and it still lives; _or, _it has, and it has breathed of the toxic fumes and expired. There is simply no way to tell which is the case unless we open the chest, so until we have seen with our own eyes what has become of the vial and the cat, it is as though neither occurrence has yet come to pass, and also that _both _occurrences exist simultaneously. We could, in a manner of speaking, say that while the lid remains closed, the vial is both whole and broken, the cat, both dead and alive."

"What a horrible experiment!" said the Queen, taking a step back. "Do you really have a cat and a vial of poison gas in there?"

Michel seemed taken aback by her taken abackedness. Perhaps because the Queen had shown far fewer scruples when it came to exposing birds and human beings to toxic fumes and other equally lethal things in the past.

But, in fact, her reaction was far more reasonable than he made it seem. A bird may be pretty and sing, but it is ultimately a very useless thing, more of a nuisance than its worth; and the same could be said of many a human being, who are easily replaced. But a cat is a catcher of all sorts of vermin, and a good catcher is born to it. He cannot be hired or trained. And the castle had been enjoying a rather good run of it lately, in terms of its rodent population.

"I do, Your Grace—but I assure you it wasn't intentional," Michel said quickly, eager to recover lost ground. "The cat jumped into the chest with the vial already in it, entirely of its own accord. I only realized they were in there together after I had shut the lid of the chest, when I remembered seeing a mass of ginger fur inside. Well, by then, you understand, it was too late. If I opened the lid straight-away and the vial happened to be newly broken, I risked inhaling the contents myself."

"I see. So you were too afraid to risk a possibility that may or may not yet have happened to assess whether the cat could be saved."

"Begging your pardon, Your Grace, but whether the cat has broken the vial or not is beside the point," said Michel, which surely meant he could not deny the Queen had him pegged. "I only brought up the example to better explain the nature of prophecy. While an event has not yet happened, all the possibilities remain equally viable; but as decisions are made and actions taken, some of those possibilities are shed until all we are left with is the one that will eventually become reality. Unless we could observe all those incremental decisions and actions in between, with an omniscient perspective akin to God's, our picture of the final outcome will never be perfectly clear until the very moment of its fruition."

"Are you trying to tell me prophecy only works after what it 'foretells' has come to pass?" said the Queen with a wry grin.

It was the kind of grin an executioner wears when he's about to take your head, which is only another one of many reasons an executioner must hide his face. "What use are you, Nostradamus," she said, "if you can only read the future after it has already happened?"

But he insisted, "It's more complicated than that. Prophecy is not an exact science, Your Grace. Sometimes the visions are clear. And, yes, sometimes the full weight and nuance of all their meaning can only be properly interpreted in hindsight. But is it not better to err on the side of caution and heed the warning in the possibilities lest we allow some tragedy that was entirely preventable to run its course?"

"Well?" said the Queen impatiently. "Which is it, Nostradamus? Is the cat dead or alive? Thanks to you, I shall not be at ease until I know!"

Michel lifted the lid of the chest, and sunlight came streaming into my little sanctuary. I suppose I should have been grateful that I now had an exit (I can assure you, I had not chosen the chest as my napping-place because I thought someone would shut me up in it, but that's the nature of prophecy for you); but as it was, I was still rather comfortable where I was and didn't want to open my eyes just yet, present company be damned.

The Queen sucked in a breath—which, given the circumstances, probably wasn't wise. "The vial. It's broken."

Beside her, Michel sighed deeply. "I was rather fond of that one."

Though I would have loved for them to keep belaboring under the assumption that they had killed me, I couldn't help myself any longer. I yawned. And, one thing leading to another, yawning naturally progressed to stretching my front legs and all fourteen toes, and by then my back legs demanded equal treatment. So, since I was already up, I decided I had better make myself scarce before Michel could devise any further experiments to unintentionally subject me to, and find some other quiet place to finish my nap.

"Well, there you have it," I heard the Queen say as I made my exit. "As you said, Nostradamus, both states were simultaneously true. The vial _was_ broken, and the cat _is_ alive. How do you interpret that backwards prophecy?"

"I suppose I confused the vials," said one relieved Michel. "It must not have contained any poison after all."

But the joke was on them. The problem was not with the vial. The problem was with the cat.


	2. I Am A Cat

I am a cat. I as yet have no name. I come and go wherever and whenever I please, noticed by hardly a soul. Unless I wish otherwise.

I have sat in the laps of kings and queens and been hand-fed from the high table. Chamber maids fawn over me, and stablehands salute me when I go by. I have climbed to the highest towers and aeries, and I know every dingy passage beneath the floors where only mice and spiders live. Surely no one is so much a master of the palace and its grounds as I.

But even I arose from humble beginnings. I was born in the stables, the third in a litter of six, with seven toes on each of my front feet, and five on my back. Naturally this abnormality led to much derision amongst my brothers and sisters, who had the more typical five/four configuration; but in the world of humans in which I was born, my extra toes marked me as lucky.

"Well, would you look here. Another little bastard!"

So spake the first human being I ever met. He had straight dark hair on the top of his head and was wearing a dark riding cloak that smelled like the horses that had surrounded me my entire life up until then. I must say I was quite shocked at the baldness of this creature's face, as he seemed unable to grow out his fur beyond a pitiable patchy stubble and a curiously placed strip above each eye. I would soon learn that the females of the species are even balder still, and furthermore than they sometimes go to great lengths to maintain the smooth hairlessness of their muzzles.

But at the moment, I was too entranced by this creature's staring green eyes to move. And by the fact he had me by the scruff of my neck, dangling higher off the ground than I'd ever been before. I suppose I should have been afraid—after all, he was a stranger, and I such a small thing, and it isn't unheard of for men to eat cats in times when meat is scarce—but we cats have a way of knowing after just a few seconds which humans are of like mind with us.

This one had something distinctly cat about him that went beyond his green eyes. Something proud and solitary and cunning. Some aura of a survivor. And he was actually trying to grow out the fur on his face and cure its embarrassing baldness. Here, I thought, is a cat among men.

Then he took my front paw and splayed my toes. How dare he? I thought. And just when I had paid him the compliment of deeming him an honorary cat-folk. He doesn't know even the first thing about our manners, I thought. But seeing that he was completely ignorant of the gravity of his offense, I managed to find it in me to forgive him.

"Seven toes!" he said. "Well, little fellow, that must make you lucky."

It was the first time I heard that, and would not be the last. And though no one has adequately been able to explain to me where this intangible quality called "luck" actually comes from, or why it should stem from the number seven, I suppose my life is proof if there be any that it must exist. For if I had been born with one fewer toe on each paw, I probably would have been labeled the Devil's cat by the same superstitious humans who deemed me lucky, and thrown in the lake.

But that was only the beginning of my good fortune. Before my first two months were over, half of my siblings were dead: One was trampled by a horse (and really, a stable is probably not the safest place to try to raise a litter of rowdy kittens); one had climbed up on top of the water trough as soon as she was able and promptly fell in and drowned; and one simply failed to thrive. Which was no skin off my nose. It only meant there was more milk left for me and my remaining two siblings, and until I was weaned I grew up healthy and fat.

I suppose it was fate, then, that when I was old enough to wander about on my own, I left those dingy stables behind and followed my nose to the palace kitchens.

Where I was promptly tossed out on my nose by the head cook before he could utter so much as a "by your leave." Still, I couldn't help myself. The aromas emanating from inside were an irresistible call, and I ventured back toward them, only this time to get the boot.

So I tried another door that seemed to be leading by some roundabout route to the same smell, and was just minding my own business, trying to make as little fuss about myself as possible, when a scullery maid who wasn't watching where she was going ran into me, upending her basin of dirty water all over the both of us and everything else within a five-foot radius.

Well, as you can probably imagine she let out such an awful screech that her kinsfolk came running to her aid, and within moments I was surrounded by a bunch of females wearing a curious bit of clothing I came to learn is called an apron, and wielding all sorts of formidable weapons that are a cat's sworn enemy: brooms, pokers, pans and paddles. To this day, I don't know why they were so upset; _I _wasn't the one not watching where I was going; but I've learned it's an inborn trait of humans to blame anyone but themselves for their own mistakes.

Needless to say, even innocent that I was I could tell they had it in for me. So I ran and hid everywhere I could possibly fit, shooting through their grasping hands like the soaped-up hounded thing I was, until I finally lost them in the larder behind some sacks of grain. By then I was so exhausted from all the hullabaloo, I fell right asleep.

When I awoke, it was to my hiding place being removed. The young man doing the removing was so surprised to see me, he set the sack of barley aside and crouched down to have a look at me.

He was also wearing one of those apron contraptions, which marked him as one of the dreaded kitchen guard, so I was naturally wary. But when he extended his hand to me, it wasn't carrying any weapon. Furthermore, it smelled a little like cheese, which is what we cats imagine heaven must be full of, so between that and the proper deference he was showing me, I figured he couldn't be all bad.

Thus began a beautiful friendship. When the head cook was out, I would sneak into the kitchen and see the young man, and he would give me scraps from whatever meat he was trimming, or little crumbles of cheese or cake, or the eggs that came to him from the henhouse already cracked. In return, I showed him the kills I had made around the kitchen and storerooms, and displayed a little of my hunting prowess on them before taking them outside to eat.

One time I brought him a sparrow that was still clinging to life, so I could show him my finishing move. I had perfected it and was rather proud. Not to mention, he was quite skilled at hacking up ducks and rabbits and the like himself, so I had it in mind that he might appreciate trading pointers.

Well, he didn't like that one bit. Yelled at me about getting blood all over the cutting table when the sparrow tried to escape, so I never brought him live animals again. (I still don't understand what the big deal is. Humans get blood on the tables from already-dead animals all the time.) I did offer him a couple of mice as a gesture of good will, but he always politely declined. Ah well: That just meant more for me.

"What a good little hunter," he would say, and rub me on the head.

He had rather large hands, and quickly figured out all the spots that make me purr shamelessly. The kitchen maids would tease him about having a soft spot for blonds, and though I can't say I know what that means, it didn't seem to hurt our relationship any. I'm not sure if he ever actually understood me, but he was one of the few humans who bothered to listen when I talked to him, and usually figured out enough to give me what I wanted. "Seven times lucky," he would call me when I greeted him with a rub against the back of his leg.

He could have used some of my luck, I think. He disappeared a little while back, and the kitchens just haven't been the same without him—though now that I've paid my dues with a few dozen dead mice, the scullery girls no longer bother me when I warm myself by their fire through the winter months.

Still, when they tap me between the ears, I can't help remembering my kitchen boy's big hands, which my whole head could fit inside, and a strange feeling comes over me. As if I've forgotten to do something important.


End file.
